Love & Light, Evil & Resistance at Tulsa Tour Opener

Love is all we have left, after sitting around in airports all day, trying to get to Tulsa for opening night. Love is all we have left, we will need to wake up before dawn to catch another flight to St. Louis for the second night of the tour. Love is all we have left, after all the money we will spend on this touring hobby this spring. Love Is All We Have Left, what a moving call to worship and call to action with which to begin this show!

Many of us fans travel just as hard as the band, investing crazy amounts of spiritual and financial investment into making this happen. Put “Hey I’ve been waiting to get home a long time” from Lights of Home in conversation with “You can’t return to where you’ve never left” from Cedarwood Road, and we are all just visionaries and vagabonds, finding home wherever we hang the tour lanyard. Or we are all just homebodies, traveling only in the comfort of our headphones, catching the show because of someone’s generous livestream. U2 simultaneously cultivates the rooted and the rootless in its restless but committed fanbase, and this time.

Due to the continuing emotional content, it’s not fair to call the “innocence suite,” in the first part of the show, safe or lazy. We need not compare this tour to other tours. U2 have participated in plenty of revivals of past themes on subsequent tours, it’s just that the interlocking reprises of Innocence into Experience exist in more intimate reciprocity than any precedent in the band’s touring career.

The second set shocked us though, shaking up any reticence that this tour would tame the tragic resonance of its content. By the time the crackling crunches of Vertigo gave way to Desire, we all recognized Bono was in character, and the band had descended on the small stage for a sinister and surreal circus act, a punkish pentecostal tent revival. From the shimmering sequins on his tuxedo jacket to the over-the-top tophat, Bono incorporated elements of his tortured B-movie taunts, last seen during Exit on JT30.

Before we were greeted by the return of the MacPhisto character made famous during ZooTV days, I caught traces of James Franco’s version of the Wizard of Oz. No matter who this madman was, he looked like a washed up carnival barker who had nibbled a little too much of the brown acid at Woodstock. Before going all Juggalo face with the heat of horns and hate, we got a little desperate preaching about the lusty and greedy elements of Experience. This experience is not the mature sage wisdom of middle aged rockstar do-gooder, no, but the raw confessions of a rock bottom moment, about to get sucked into a satanic salon.

When MacPhisto fully manifested his screwtape manifesto, it was even darker than the sepia-toned anti-Trump moment last summer. He snarled out his dramatic reading from the dark side: “I’ve been a busy little devil. But you’ve made it all so much easier for me these days.  The truth is dead. When you don’t believe that I exist, that’s when I do my best work.” The liberal naive notion that if we pretend evil does not exist, it does not exist, is turned on its head by a man who has called himself a radical centrist; insofar for Bono, the center is God not humanity.

The short speech might make your hair stand up. These are not the happy chillbumps of Where the Streets Have No Name, but the theological recognition that evil has name and goes by many names. My name is Legion, for we are many — a stunning warning from the holy scriptures comes to mind. All this fused into a smoking live debut of Acrobat. This is one of those times when you pinch yourself, to say you were there.

Although Bono and the shows visual designers are always on-point with activist messaging, this show might have been the most adamant call back to the barricades of nonviolent resistance I have ever seen at a U2 concert.  From before and throughout the show, the screens scrolled agitprop posters that suggest somebody in the U2 creative team knows that this tour falls on the fiftieth anniversary of the May 1968 uprisings in Paris. “Respect Existence or Expect Resistance” is only one of many radical memes seen on the screens.

Even though some of the overt visual references to the neo-nazis and alt-right in the show were traumatizing and triggering, they set up what might be the most riveting version of Pride in that song’s illuminated history. The band stationed themselves at the corners of a quadrilateral filling the arena floor, and the house lights went up; it was mesmerizing church in a new way, for a band that is always finding ways to make church happen in hockey arenas. It healed just a little, taking our breath away after the first part of the second half left us broken.

American Soul and Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way are used as American prayers to pull U2’s adopted second country back from the precipice. We still don’t know how it is going to turn out, but Bono recited the Declaration of Independence as reverently as he recited the 23rd Psalm earlier in the show.

While last year’s stadium tour was a classic rock victory lap, this is a serious show for serious fans. The new set is a lone light bulb at the end of a dark alley, and if we participate with open hearts, the usual joy of a U2 show also wrestled with elements of grief and sadness and vulnerable uncertainty. We will be back to explore these regions of reckoning as the tour continues.

-Andrew William Smith, editor        @teacheronradio

Photo credits- Desire/Macphisto by Remy from @U2Start

                          Bono Kneeling by Jaime Rodriguez @jrodconcerts

                          Full band Vertigo by Andrew William Smith

Adam’s Humanity & Recovery Take Center Stage in Big Week for U2

When Adam Clayton strolled onto the Tree Stage at MetLife Stadium on June 28^th and 29^th, it wasn’t an ordinary week for the bass man, in what has been a rehearsed and routine set each night for Joshua Tree Tour 2017.

Long accustomed to being quietly appreciated for his tasty bass lines and laid-back demeanor, Adam was the toast of New York on June 26th. Celebrated by the MusiCares foundation for his recovery from alcohol addiction and for using his celebrity to help at-risk youth, Adam gave a heart-pulling and outspoken speech about his battles with alcohol, and ultimately, his conquering through surrender.

Opening-up to the intimate crowd in midtown Manhattan with his inspiring speech, Adam shared, “I was filled with fear and unable to objectively examine what was going on or see how these negative traits were holding me back.” Adam credited a varied group including Eric Clapton, Pete Townsend, his U2 bandmates, and his wife Mariana, who he says: “has never seen me drinking, but she does know me crazy.”

The evening had musical performances from artists as varied as Macy Gray, Jack Garratt, and The Lumineers who performed “One,” a song the band used to cover in bars down the street just a half decade ago. Ultimately, it was Bono, The Edge, and Larry Mullen Jr who joined their bassman for a short set including “Stuck in a Moment,” “Vertigo,” and “I Will Follow,” to close out a magical and intimate evening.

48 hours later, “intimate” was not a word that was likely on Adam’s Clayton’s mind. At 9:25 pm, MetLife Stadium busted with energy from 50,000 souls, as Adam joined his bandmates to start what would be an epic two-night stand at the New York area’s tour stops.

With the band’s wives, daughters, and best friends all in attendance—U2 came ready to play. The Joshua Tree Tour has been on the road for 18 shows since mid-May and these shows were #19 and #20, before finishing up the leg in Cleveland on July 1^st. In other words, the tour is in full force now.

With an inspired Adam providing the backbone along with Larry Mullen Jr’s drums, U2 played their now traditional War-Unforgettable Fire knockout prelude to start the shows before heading to the main stage to play The Joshua Tree. “Bad” has been an emotional and appropriate part of this opening section, and in Boston on Sunday the 25th, Bono gave a special nod and dedication to Adam, in anticipation of the Monday event.

During night one, it was Bono who referred to the album as a cassette jokingly making fun of the fact that many in the audience were babies when the songs were first released. This tour has been a revelation not only for fans, but the band itself to rediscover the Joshua Tree songs live, and Bono made sure he reiterated: “It’s taken us 30 years to get to know this album, songs are mysterious things. Like an old friend, you think you know them, but then they surprise you”.

Night two, saw Adam continue the playful mood, as Bono told the intriguing story of briefly touring with an Irish band called the “Drifting Cowboys.” Per Bono’s words, this band during U2’s very early years recommended to Bono to change from rock to country to increase chances of success.  Needless to say, we are lucky Bono didn’t heed that advice.

Ultimately, the show at MetLife Stadium on June 29^th, culminated one of the most unforgettable weeks for Adam Clayton. And as he played the beautiful bass line to “The Little Things That Give You Away” ending one of the shows, it was us fans who are grateful to have Adam be part of our lives. -Jaime Rodriguez @Jrodconcerts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

U2 beats the heat & rain & wins over the “two Floridas”!

During the current Joshua Tree tour, perhaps no pair of stops would be as intriguing as Miami and Tampa, embodying the “two Americas” theme of the album and theme of these times.

The state of Florida is as different and diverse as any state in America. Taking the famous I-4 Corridor that connects Orlando and Tampa as a separator, North and South Florida are geographically, culturally, and politically different. Here in the same state, we have different political bases as “red” as Texas (Central and North Florida) and as “blue” as California (South Florida). Every election year, the Sunshine State is an all-important ‘tossup’ state.

Catering to both demographics in the span of 4 days (Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium on June 11^th and Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium on June 14^th), the Irish lads brought their sold-out Joshua Tree tour here after a month on the road. Now, the setlist has been polished, the transitions are perfected, and the show sears and soars like a well-oiled machine.

In Miami, the summer humidity didn’t stop 60,000 faithful from packing every seat of (the aptly named) Hard Rock Stadium where Larry Mullen Jr got the party started at 8:45 pm. With an energy coming from fans who came from what seemed like every South American country, the band channeled that fuel into a cracking first set that was only derailed by some severe guitar issues from The Edge during “Pride.” Guitar issues and some visible frustration from The Edge could not stop the show as soon the 200-ft. screen finally lit up with an 8K ultra high-definition red that would set the stadium on fire a few seconds later.

This tour is without a doubt the more political of the past few tours and the crowd reaction to the blunt criticism of the current administration went mostly well in Miami, even with an awkward shout-out to Senator Marco Rubio. But would the reception be the same in Tampa a few days later?

When the tour got to Tampa, we saw the central Florida city soaking in a day of thunderstorms and torrential summer downpours. At one point in the general admission line, rumors were floating the show may had to be canceled if thunder and lightning were within 8 miles of Raymond James Stadium.

Fortunately for the Joshua Tree, God was with Tampa, and the show went on as planned, returning to the city where Tampa Stadium had the original tour in 1987. Even a big, brilliant double-rainbow adorned and decorated the stadium as OneRepublic took the stage to warm up the crowd.

Once the thousands settled into their seats, it was clear that this would be a different show than Miami. From the very beginning as Adam Clayton swayed the rhythm of “New Year’s Day,” Bono was already reaching out the more conservative crowd (as he previously did in Texas). “Left, right and in between. Everyone is welcomed here”!

Maybe it was the fresh rainy weather a few hours prior, or the breeze that hit the stadium shortly after the show began, but Bono was chatty, joyous, and a bit nimbler than in the humidity and sweat of a few nights prior. For “One Tree Hill,” Bono told the story of Greg Carroll before dedicating it on this night to the city of Orlando “for the Pulse nightclub and the 49 souls that were taken away.”

As expected, a few criticisms from fans came during political sections of the show, including a St. Petersburg resident who said: “Don’t they know we just want to hear some good music and no politics? Or a local Tampa couple who bluntly said that Bono “didn’t care for the audience” by assuming they agree with him on everything.

Both setlists were identical, including what might be the new closer for this tour: “Vertigo.”

As much as some fans complain that “Vertigo” is overplayed and the song should be dropped, it was clear from the reception both nights, that it set the crowd on fire. Perhaps alternating with “I Will Follow” and a new song, “Vertigo” is likely not going anywhere.

All in all, U2 provided the Sunshine State with two magnificent shows, yet very different ones. The politics may differ in these cities, but our love for U2 and Joshua Tree songs is something we all have in common.
-Jaime Rodriguez, @jrodconcerts https://www.jrodconcerts.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

U2′s Joshua Tree Revival Hits Texas Big Tents

As cheesy as Bono’s slogans are, I love them all. As annoying as his pleas for peaceful dialogue and post-partisan unity are, I need them every time. As he has said before, compromise is not a dirty word. Neither us nor them: only we the people who follow this band, across this land.

On this Joshua Tree anniversary tour, reaching the masses in the massive venues of North America through July 1 and Europe through August 1, Bono has said these are concrete temples, these football stadiums. In the Texas heat, the concrete cathedrals are big tents, with the retractable roof in place and the AC turned up. By Friday in Dallas, temperatures rose to the mid 90s, so we were glad to be indoors. On my first Joshua Tree adventure with my teenage self in 1987, I skipped the Texas shows. This time, Houston and Dallas were my second and third shows of five.

Tracks from War and Unforgettable Fire serve up such a great prelude on the tree stage, but the humming, rising, intoxicating intro to Streets is when church begins. During “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” he wants to wipe our “Manchester tears away,” a reference to the terrorist attack on May 22 after an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England. Since Bono has added the original “No War” chant to the recurring “No More” chant, it’s like I am back in the basement on Timberline, mind blown and body shaken and spirit moved by the Blood Red Sky VHS tape I dubbed off MTV. As “Pride” winds down and “Streets” revs up, Bono is preaching. For the frontman, the true radical is straight down the middle of the road. Everyone is welcome in this tent, for the “furious and faithful” are an America based on “joy and justice, compassion and community, rescue and refuge.”

For tonight, common ground is higher ground, Hewson teaches and preaches. For fans, the Joshua Tree portion of the show, the main act, that is higher ground. The reality that for some of us fans, the Holy Spirit always knows how to show up for “Where The Streets Have No Name.” But I cannot dance like this at the mainline churches I’ve attended, so for two Texas nights, I let the spirit take over. The concrete mainfloor of this concrete temple became a charismatic church aisle. Even though you can get a really good spot up front arriving as late as 6pm, I like to wander and hang out at the back, so I can work it out, rocking solo, prayers and emotions, dancing like nobody’s watching, throughout each part of the set. Back where a fan has plenty of room, I saw I was not alone in my own private dance party, as a young child and her mother practiced the latest moves learned at dance class. I started seeing this band with my parents. It’s just amazing how the shows bring us all together.

For most of the last three decades, “With Or Without You” or “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” are highlights of any U2 set they appear in. Same for the psychedelic growl of “Bullet the Blue Sky,” which for once is in its more traditional form, after countless recontextualizing over the intervening years. I’m not saying I don’t love the first side of Joshua Tree, all the way through “Running To Stand Still,” but these are all huge U2 songs that nobody would be surprised to hear in any concert on a recent tour. For example, during the Vertigo tour which I caught four times in 2005, you could expect to hear three or four of them on a given night, and all five of the first side were in rotation.

But side two, well that is a different story. These are all hardcore rarities. Had they not announced this special tour, I would have expected to never hear any of these songs again. Sure, I might have been surprised by the occasional appearance of “In God’s Country” or “One Tree Hill,” but even for the dedicated fans coming to these shows, this second side feels like something from another planet or at least time zone, a secret show that you won in a radio or TV lottery or that only popped up in your dreams.

“Red Hill Mining Town” is all chills and thrills, and the shivers continue until the encore break. “In God’s Country” refers not just to the panoramic landscapes, seen on the big screen as visuals so grand in the hand of Anton Corbijn, but also, according to Bono, to the interior landscapes of our psychological and spiritual reality. That’s what so surreal and even psychedelic about this show, there’s the invocation of something utopian, not either side of the “two Americas” but the cosmic American dreamscape of a better place that does not deny the bitter place.

The thorny and corny romp called “Trip Through Your Wires” has always been one of my all-time favorite U2 deep tracks. It’s equal parts sanctified and raunchy, rebellious yet holy, and I am not talking about the bikini-clad model seen by all of us and seeming out-of-place on a U2 big screen. The kind of thirst Bono invokes is inherently sacred, and he knows as well as any, that the required drink of water might come from an angel or a devil, from a lover or from God’s thunder and rain.

The always talkative Bono didn’t talk as much during the Joshua Tree tracks, but that may be changing as the tour moves on. In Houston, before “One Tree Hill,” he quoted the recent track “California,” saying, “There is no end to grief because there is no end to love.” On Friday night, before the same song, he talked about its origins in New Zealand, and he referenced Greg Carroll, the U2 crew member for whom the song is dedicated. “For anyone who has been robbed of a beautiful soul, we are going to sing this for you.” The hole in U2’s collective heart always finds the hole in our hearts, until we stumble to wholeness together. The healing might be temporary, but it’s real.

In honesty, on many private listens to the longtime favorite album, I would consider “One Tree Hill” to be the closing song. I know there are two more tracks, but they don’t get me on the album. But at this live revival, I didn’t sprint for the men’s room. Perhaps a dark conclusion is needed. After an archival film clip that parodies America’s 45th president, “Exit” begins. Bono reappears in a big black hat, begging us into a harrowing narrative of harm. This is a bad trip, like the brown acid at Woodstock. Our burdened brains receive a sucker-punch of adrenalin and dementia, so suddenly you are stuck in a mega-church gone wrong with psychotic pit-bull evangelism. The rest of the set will provide a suitable exorcism, be reassured.

After that bad-boy sadistic satisfaction of “Exit” as intentional trainwreck travesty, “Mothers of the Disappeared” still shows up as a solemn tribute. We could sing it for any mother and every mother. But mothers of sons cut down too soon by brutality, they need this song. When Bono took off his hat, bowed his head, and raised his fist, it’s like I could see that 1987 ponytail again. It’s the young man inside the old man from Dublin, said the young man inside this fan-man who chased this band back then and chases this band now.

At Houston, when they moved “Miss Sarajevo” and “Bad” to the first encore spot, this meant I could have my stupid-cry all in one place. These songs prompted me to bawl for different reasons, the first for collective grief, the latter for spiritual relief. The early “Bad” in Dallas was also dynamic, if a little disconcerting, as that track always felt like it fit in the middle or end of a set.

After first seeing the show in northern California, I frankly didn’t anticipate how well the Syria footage and Omaima plea would play in a place like Texas. So in Houston, I turned my back to the stage and walked towards the fans, scanning faces both on the floor and in the stands. I saw more tears, some quizzical but mostly sincere and solemn gazes of people drinking in the predicament of how wrong this world can be when we abandon our better selves for selfish systems. The singing about surrender promises at least one solution. Get out of self, get out there and help others.

Thanks to more setlist rearranging in Dallas, this meant that on Friday night, my two Texas shows in three days would end with a crescendo. “Beautiful Day” is always a beautiful thing, even in this rainbow-colored, space-age rendition. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the new track, “The Little Things That Give You Away,” but it feels like an odd way to end this show. I just wish they would release the next album already! So after “Beautiful Day,” the call of the exit ramps echoed in my gut, the tug of the idea of beating some traffic back to my AirBNB. By the time they finished an energizing “Elevation,” which is always better live, which always feels like I am at the gym, getting my workout on and hard, I had left the GA mainfloor and was bouncing around the concourse, close to the doors. So when Bono said “We can do this” and pulled an improvisational audible call for “I Will Follow,” it sent me into happy, zappy boyhood orbit once again. An usher and I danced on the outskirts, each of us in our own personal head and heart zone of rocking, sonic, cosmic, boundless, bounding bliss.

Leaving a U2 always comes with mixed feelings. This concert left me exhilarated, but I regret that my current run with them has already passed its halfway point. Three shows down, two remaining! This hobby costs more than it did in 1987, so I am grateful to my two jobs for the flexibility and income and my dear family for the support they offer me in zipping around to these gigs. -Andrew William Smith, @teacheronradio 

Photos are from Pasadena shows, by Justin Kent. http://www.justin-kent.com/

“World Peace Tomorrow”: U2′s 1987 Manifesto Resurfaces

The U2 manifesto to change the world has resurfaced, buried in a 1987 interview available on YouTube.

During the conversation with NBC television in the United States that took place during the third leg of the first Joshua Tree tour, the band were pressed on their reputation as the new religious and social conscience of rock music. As in other interviews where this topic was pursued, the band pushed back against any messianic implications that they were or are spokespeople, while also owning their commitment to justice.

Edge emphasized, “We refuse to accept that there are certain things that you can’t deal with in a rock n roll song.”

Toward the end of the interview (around the 6:25 mark of part 5 of the clips), the band kicked into playful mode and dropped a point-by-point declaration, which we can now show the world again, their 1987 manifesto. It all seems sincere, except for a silly point about hats and Texans, which is hilarious considering the band’s late 1980s obsession with American head-wear. The points follow:

1. Solve World Hunger
2. World Peace Tomorrow
3. All Political Prisoners Released Tomorrow
4. Removal of All Borders
5. Removal of All Hats from Texans
6. Free Fuel
7. Another 100,000 Rock n Roll Bands Formed

Thirty years later, the world is still dealing with these problems. There has been lots of cynicism from left and right toward the band’s activism over the decades, but they still address the issues of the day. It will be interesting to see how the current controversies and commentary factors in to the upcoming U2 world tour.

The interview clip with the “manfesto” is here: https://youtu.be/H8B6ESxYkRw

The whole interview begins with this clip: https://youtu.be/nNmROSiqb7U

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